Technical Field
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a display technology. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to a reflective display apparatus and a front light structure thereof.
Description of Related Art
Currently, most electronic book readers employ a reflective display that utilizes natural light, such as sunlight, to provide illumination. Because the brightness of a reflective display is quite reliant on ambient light, once an electronic book reader utilizing a reflective display is placed in a dark environment, the reflective display is often rendered unusable. Therefore, a front light module is disposed on the reflective display, so as to provide additional illumination to the reflective display when there is no or a low level of illumination from ambient light.
A typical front light module includes a light source and a light guide plate. The light guide plate is located above the display panel. The light source is located on the lateral surface of the light guide plate, so as to emit light into the light guide plate through the lateral surface. The top surface of the light guide plate reflects the light into the display panel, so as to enable the display panel to reflect the light, which allows the user to see the image shown by the display panel.
However, some light reflected by the front light module may travel into the display panel at a high incident angle, so this light travels out of the display panel at a high reflection angle, which may then fail to travel into the user's eyes. As a result, the brightness of the reflective display apparatus decreases. If improvement of the brightness of the reflective display apparatus is desired, the brightness of the light source has to be improved, which requires more power and is not eco-friendly. Therefore, balancing the brightness requirement and the eco-friendly requirement is a dilemma of the development of the reflective display technology.